Harkat lawyer told torture reports biased
Source: The Ottawa Sun
URL: N/A
Date: December 9, 2004
Government lawyers yesterday slammed a request by accused terrorist Mohamed Harkat's lawyer to throw out key evidence thought to be obtained through torture. Squaring off against Harkat's lawyer Paul Copeland at Harkat's security certificate hearing, James Mathieson suggested the information Copeland relied upon for his argument was biased and largely based on media reports.
Copeland is trying to have evidence identifying his client as the proprietor of a Pakistani guest house for mujahedeen fighters in the 1990s declared inadmissible because it was obtained from top al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah.
Copeland alleges Zubaydah made the statements under torture after being captured by U.S. authorities in March 2002.
Copeland said using evidence obtained through torture would contravene international treaty.
"Most of this material could be characterized by conjecture of journalists ..." Mathieson argued, noting much of Copeland's evidence comes from the Globe and Mail, Newsweek and the New York Times.
REPORTS PANNED
Reports by human rights organizations and an affidavit from U.S. constitutional rights lawyer Steven Watt on the mistreatment of prisoners, including Zubaydah, while in U.S. custody, is simply biased, he added.
Besides, Mathieson said, Watt had admitted that he wasn't an expert on common interrogation practices, nor was he present when Zubaydah was questioned.
"If this were Starbucks and he ordered a latte, it would be all froth," he said of Copeland's evidence. Copeland countered by saying that Mathieson was being selective and only looking at part of the evidence.
NO STATEMENTS
Considering no country is likely to fess up to using torture and that getting a sit-down interview with Zubaydah himself is unlikely, Copeland urged Federal Court Justice Eleanor Dawson to consider the "balance of probabilities."
Harkat was arrested outside his Vanier apartment on Dec. 10, 2002 on suspicion of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent under a rarely used section of Canada's immigration law that deals with security certificates.
If Dawson determines the security certificate signed by then-solicitor general Wayne Easter and former immigration minister Denis Coderre to be valid, Harkat will likely be deported.
The hearing continues today.
tobi dot cohen at ott dot sunpub dot com
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